Tim Seibles - Commercial Break-Road Runner, Uneasy - Poetry

Tim Seibles reading from Leaning House Poetry Vol 1.

Commercial Break: Road-Runner, Uneasy

If I didn't know better I'd say
the sun never moved ever,

that somebody just pasted it there
and said the hell with it,

but that's impossible.
After awhile you have to give up

those conspiracy theories.
I get the big picture. I mean,

how big can the picture be?
I actually think it's kind of funny —

that damn coyote always scheming,
always licking his skinny chops

and me, pure speed, the object of all
his hunger, the everything he needs —

talk about impossible, talk about
the grass is always greener...

I am the other side of the fence.

You've got to wonder, at least a little,
if this could be a set-up:

with all the running I do —
the desert, the canyons, the hillsides, the desert —

all this open road has got to
lead somewhere else. I mean,

that's what freedom's all about, right?
Ending up where you want to be.

I used to think it was funny — Roadrunner
the coyote's after you Roadrunner...

Now I'm mainly tired. Not that
you'd ever know. I mean

I can still make the horizon
in two shakes of a snake's tongue,

but it never gets easier out here, alone
with Mr. Big Teeth and his ACME supplies:

leg muscle vitamins, tiger traps,
instant tornado seeds.

C'mon! I'm no tiger.
And who's making all this stuff?

I can't help being a little uneasy.
I do one of my tricks,

a rock-scorching, razor turn at 600 miles an hour,
and he falls off the cliff, the coyote —

he really falls: I see the small explosion,
his body slamming into dry dirt

so far down in the canyon
the river looks like a crayon doodle.

That has to hurt, right?
Five seconds later, he's just up the highway

hoisting a huge anvil
above a little, yellow dish of bird feed —

like I don't see what's goin' on. C'mon!

You know how sometimes, even though you're
very serious about the things you do,

it seems like, secretly, there's a
big joke being played,

and you're part of what
someone else is laughing at — only

you can't prove it, so you
keep sweating and believing in

your career, as if that
makes the difference, as if somehow

playing along isn't really

playing along as long as you're
not sure what sort of fool

you're being turned into, especially
if you're giving it one-hundred percent.

So, when I see dynamite
tucked under the ACME road-runner cupcakes,

as long as I don't wonder why my safety
isn't coming first in this situation,

as long as I don't think me
and the coyote are actually

working for the same people,

as long as I eat and

get away I'm not really stupid,

right? I'm just fast.

Category:

Entertainment

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